Floating Objects and Family Therapy Training

FLOATING OBJECTS IN FAMILY THERAPY TRAINING

Dr Alain CHABERT

alain.chabert0023@orange.fr

Floating Objects in Family Therapy training

Work on one’s sense of self and one’s sense of belonging to wider systems during training in family systems therapy: using the concept of a path of floating objects.

Abstract

This presentation operates on the premises that work on one’s sense of self is essential in the training of all psychotherapists, and, in particular, in the training of family therapists.

Next, we show how the use of Floating objects’ path is consistent with the constructivist view of family therapy.

Then, we discribe the experiences of our students during the course of their first two cycles of training (during three years) : Their family of origin (belonging-gram ; genogram ; phenomenological readings ; temporal-bases narratives, and myths) ; their current couple and family ; and their current institutional and other wider systems of belonging.

The presentation concludes with a discussion about the parralels between this work on one’s sense of self and belonging, and other relevant training domains (systems theory ; guided training ; internship programs).

Introduction

“Gnoti Seauton” (Know thyself) was inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Appollo at Delphi.

As told by PLATO (2002) in Philebus, Socrates’ teachings relied on this precept. He insisted on the importance of avoiding what he called double ignorance (not being aware of one’s ignorance) in order to perform a critical analysis and to achieve virtue as well as the virtue of dialogue.

MONTAIGNE (1972) also used the Know thyself notion. “It is myself I paint”, he wrote, while adding that “Every man bears the whole stamp of the human condition”.

Here we intend to show how our association, EcoSystèmeAssociation (ESA), integrates work on one’s sense of self, for which we use the concept and practice of floating objects, during a three-year course for family systems therapy training.

I would like to emphasise our work owes a lot to/is indebted to Philippe CAILLE and Yveline REY (1994), who invented the concept of floating objects.

I. Presentation of the family systems therapy training programme at ESA

The training course, which lasts four years, comprises three cycles: the first cycle lasts two years while the second and third cycle each last one year.

The training centre and the family therapy team work very closely. ESA and the functional unit of systems therapy are two aspects that must complement each other.

The training programme comprises four compulsory items that students study simultaneously during the first two cycles of training: systems theory; systems interview (also called guided training); work on one’s sense of self and one’s belonging to wider systems and internship all along the 4 years.

The training programme and all its contents use the concept of floating objects. This concept, consistent with the constructivist view of family therapy, is extremely rich and is particularly adequate in both initial and continuous training as well as during later supervised sessions. The use of floating objects enables students to get rid of the concept of objective reality and to explore the different systems they belong to. It also enables them to use the space that separates and unites the members of the group for their own personal development while respecting everyone’s privacy.

II. The need to work on one’s sense of self

The first psychoanalysts, Freud’s disciples, already reflected on the need for therapists to work deeply on their sense of self as part of their training.

Sigmund FREUD himself went through a crisis in 1897, as indicate by Ernest JONES (1958). It was actually a period in which he went through several crises, as a married, forty-year old, father of five, and therapist:

  • A professional contextual crisis due to the bad reception of his work.

  • A practical professional crisis due to the major problems encountered in his methods of psychoanalytic treatment and psychotherapy (catharsis, free association, interpretation of dreams).

  • A personal crisis, triggered by the death of his father.

In view of those elements, he started to self-analyse. He questioned everything he thought he knew about himself and treated his own dreams as if they were someone else’s.

This led to the now widely accepted idea that therapists must themselves undergo therapy and study the relationship between therapists and clients as a central element of the psychotherapeutic process. In psychoanalysis, other notions, deriving from that relationship, such as transference and countertransference, were discovered.

This premise is not only applicable to psychoanalysis, but also to other forms of psychotherapy. There is one obvious exception, that of therapies that rely on objective observation, such as different forms of behaviourism.

III. Practical application to family therapy

Murray BOWEN (1978) first wrote about the need to work with therapists’ families in 1968. During certain periods, therapists were required to go through a personal therapy while they were training. On the contrary, Jay HALEY (1996) and strategic therapists, who favoured objective neutrality and technical expertise, thought that future therapists’ working on their sense of self presented no interest.

Most therapists do not share any of those two radical positions. Most of the time, it is believed some kind of reflection on the therapist’s sense of self, no matter how deep, will beneficiate the therapy.

Our understanding of family systems, as well as family difficulties, is not independent of context. We conceive and analyse them according to the way we learnt how to relate with our own relatives and how to understand relationships within our own families. Our representation keeps changing as we ourselves enter couples and create new families, as contemporary ways of life, family structures and families’ identities constantly evolve.

Therapists who know about their representation of their sense of belonging to systems, among them, families, will have a better understanding of other systems.

Referring to constructivism, or second-order cybernetics, implies the following:

Firstly, as the observer is part of the observation process, he creates the reality he thinks he is barely describing. Reflection and self-reference are highly valued. As a consequence, the therapist uses himself as a source in the therapeutic system (family + therapist + cotherapist). His own personal experience, provided it has been studied, pondered and observed with a systemic approach, is part of that same resource.

Secondly, some situations arising during sessions might echo difficult past experiences and become troubling to therapists if they do not fully know their own family system. Here we can see how rich and useful Mony ELKAÏM’s concept of resonance (2001) is: the therapeutic system family + therapist (+ cotherapist…) reminds and/or amplifies therapists’ emotions and representation of their own family history, whether past or present. This can result in a deadlock unless the echo produced is used in a way that beneficiates the family in treatment.

Finally, if the illusion of an objective reality is to be replaced by an association of acknowledged and reasoned subjectivity with Mara SELVINI’s sense of neutrality (1982), preconceived opinions must be analysed and reformatted. Working on their sense of self and sense of belonging to other systems enables therapists to avoid any temptation to standardise (epistemological premises). It enables therapists to understand how each person’s norms are a social construct, a product of the society they live in and the systems they belong to. This process is necessary in order to transition from an ethics of change (wanting the other person to change) to an ethics of choice: wanting the other person to have a wider spectrum of choices (Heinz VON FOERSTER 1991) and respecting the choices they make.

IV. Floating objects and constructivism

The expression “floating objects” covers both a concept and a series of practices.

Space-time! It is both a place and a moment. It floats between the actors who create it and mould it during sessions. It lives on after sessions, like a perfume leaves its scent. CAILLE (1994) compared it to a clay ball that the therapist and the family alternately knead.

When therapists consider therapy as a floating object, they break free from any standardising impulses. Therapists perform an aesthetics of change (Bradford KEENEY 1983)) while maintaining an ethics of choice (Robert NEUBERGER 1991). They stop considering the world, clients, therapy and concepts as objects. They see therapy, as well as reality, as a work in progress, to be built collectively with families, whose existence does not precede their meeting.

The objects’ creators and the many systemic therapists that followed suit used floating objects as a way of updating pre-existing practices (genograms, family sculpting…) and created new objects. Those objects can be built during or between sessions. They occupy the intermediary space in the therapeutic system.

The following table represents some of the floating objects that are used (some more often than others) according to the logical level at which they operate.

LINEAR LEVEL

Systemic harlequin

Genogram

CIRCULAR LEVEL

Genogram

Family sculpting

Imaginary genogram

Diagram of relationships

Systemic village

MYTHICAL LEVEL

Systemic village

Systemic cartouche

Table of dreams

Coat of arms

Diagram of belonging

Systemic tale

TEMPORAL LEVEL/time-based level

Game of the goose

Systemic river

Multi Cursus

Systemic tale

Genogram

How can we observe families, among them our own family, through multiple lenses? This question can be rephrased as: For systemic therapists, what is a family?

A family is, of course, a compound of characters!

But it is, first and foremost:

  • A communication space, with its rituals, its sexual relationships, its secrets, its alliances, its paradoxes…

  • A story, with life cycles, crises, periods of homeostasis, periods of change, dreams, pain, projects, events…

  • An identity, with its myths, one founding myth, its virtues, its boundaries, a common sense of belonging…

Each logical level sees different elements organised in a circular form. But those different levels also interact in a circular way: the story as it unfolds and the here and now; myths and rituals; types of relationships and sense of belonging; events and identity…

V. The path of floating objects in our training programme

The path explores the different levels of relationships between individuals and the systems they belong to or used to belong to.

The different systems are, chronologically:

  • Original family. It is studied during the first year and most of the second year.

  • Couple and current family. It is studied at the end of the second year.

  • Institutions and other systems. They are studied in third year.

This exploration preferably uses the notion of floating objects, as well as different practical applications of the concept. They are used in linear, communicational, temporal and mythical observation of those systems.

Students work in a small group with the help of two therapists-trainers.

Over a period of three years, students are asked to reflect between classes and to share their conclusions with the rest of the group. During classes, students present the result of their individual work and the floating objects they would use.

Each step of the reflection process can be divided into four units. The first two are performed by students on their own time.

  • Conducting a reflection through the prism of a floating object. Developing the task required by trainers.

  • Creating an object.

The last two units are performed in class.

  • Each student presents their findings and answers questions from the group (other students and trainers). Circular questioning is the preferred mode of exchange.

  • Each student listens to other presentations and prepares questions.

This method is always adapted to the group for the first and second cycles of training (three years in total):

Each object is studied over a period of two or three classes. The path of floating objects is a progression over a period of three years.

Actually the program is:

Diagram of belonging

Origin family (genogram, family sculpting, dream painting, mythical representation by object, abstracted painting or photographic assembly, systemic cartouche or coat of arms, narrative approach by game of the goose and systemic stories like tale or other, masks).

Couple and actual family (Freedom test, game of qualities and defects, birth and growth certificate, cartouche or coat of arms, intimacy and standards).

Institution (multilevel description, quadrangular model).

Other systems of belonging, relations between systems, path of systems all along live.

Training group as belonging system.

Between classes, students are asked to research and make objects. During summer break, students are also asked to perform a task of in-depth thinking over the previous year’s path and progress.

All work is done following a series of general rules:

  • All students must adopt a non-standardised view when listening to presentations. All situations and emotions must be met with empathy.

  • Catharsis is never an objective: while emotions are welcome, they must never be provoked.

  • Each student can refuse to answer a specific question. This is a basic right: students are informed about it at the beginning of the training programme and regularly reminded about it.

  • Each student must respect other participants’ silence.

  • All questioning is done following the circular method, which in turn engenders multiple circularity between interactions, as indicate on a table

  • Sense of humour is highly valued. As recommended by the 19th DALAI LAMA (2007) in his 19th Lesson for Living a Peaceful Life: “Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon”.

VI. Interactions between items

During summer break, students are asked to do personal work. Part of it consists of reflecting on the theoretical aspects they have studied during the previous year and how they complete the internship observations, the exercises they performed during systemic interviews and the work they performed on their sense of self. More generally speaking, throughout their training, students tend bridges between different items.

Conclusion

We started asking our students to fill a feedback questionnaire as early as 2002. The questionnaires received so far tend to show students acknowledge they have acquired relationship knowledge through cognitive and emotional learning.

This process of emotional and cognitive learning creates a story that is written throughout the training programme and enables students to understand systems (circular causality, context, complexity). It is a never ending story, where each analysis of past events creates a new story as students break free from standardised views as they experience other perspectives. This observation fits with Hannah ARENDT’s word (1995) “Plurality is the law of the earth”.

Alain CHABERT

CHAMBERY 73000 FRANCE

Psychiatrist

Member of E.F.T.A. – C.I.M.

ESA EcoSystèmeAssociation, member of E.F.T.A. – T.I.C.

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

. ARENDT Hannah (1995) Condition de l’homme moderne, Agora Pockett Paris

. BOWEN Murray (1978) Family therapy in clinical practice, Jason Aronson NY

. CAILLE Philippe et REY Yveline (1994) Les Objets Flottants ESF Paris

. HALEY Jay (1996) Learning and teaching therapy Guilford press NY

. KEENEY Bradford (1983) Aesthetics of change Guilford press NY

. MONTAIGNE (1972) Les essais, Le livre de poche Paris

. NEUBURGER Robert (1991) Ethique de changement ou éthique de choix, in REY Y. et PRIEUR B. Systeme, Ethique, Perspectives en thérapie familiale ESF Paris

. PLATON (2002) Philèbe, Flammarion poche Paris

. SELVINI-PALAZZOLI Mara (1982) Hypothétisation, circularité, neutralité; guide pour celui qui conduit la séance, in Thérapie familiale, vol. 3, Geneve

. VON FOERSTER Heinz (1991Ethique et cybernétique de second ordre, in REY Y. et PRIEUR B. op. cit.